Unfortunately I don’t hold out much hope for success.  None of it is new; some of the ideas have been suggested before, others have been tried, but it has never really taken and I think that some really deep cultural changes would be needed to make any difference.  The only difference now is that perhaps ever-rising fuel prices will give people more of an incentive.

Amongst the ideas are the usual suspects: staggering travel times, reducing bus and train fares for off-peak travel, home-working and videoconferencing.   I thik that one reason such ideas fail is the same reason that efforts to get people out of cars and onto public transport to ease congestion also fail – everyone says it is a good idea in principle, but they don’t want to do it themselves, they want everyone else to do it so they can continue driving without getting stuck in traffic jams.

Where I work we have a degree of flexitime, facilities for home-working, some concessions on buses and trains and yet the biggest problem on site is how hard it is to park if you arrive after 8:30.

Of course, if you work in a shop, factory, restaurant, warehouse, and lots of other places then homeworking is a non-starter as are choosing your own hours.  All these ideas are really aimed at office workers and are not aimed too much at the bosses who already have quite a bit of flexibility which they often use.  The problem lies with the lack of trust they put in their workers.

They often think that staff working at home will be dossing around, or they that staff who come in really early or really late will spend the hours they are at work alone dossing around.  I don’t know why they think theat – maybe that is what they do when they are working at home and assume everyone else will be the same?

The idea of rural hubs sounds interesting, but the details could be difficult.  Our company have a few satellite offices and some people work at the nearest site rather than their official base sometimes, but they are always in a company site with all the security that involves.  Would a bank be happy for its staff to be working in a local hot-desking place where they might be sitting next to somebody who works for a competitor or customer?

To suceed, such schemes would need a lot of planning and a lot of investment in telecoms infrastructure and by companies.  They would need some hefty servers to handle VPN traffic for a start.  They would probably want all the laptops encrypted which can add a couple of hundred to the cost of each PC.   It would pay off in the long run, but we have such short-term outlooks that it would be difficult to persuade companies to make the investments when the payback period might be ten years – or when they make the investment but the return is a benefit to society rather than to the company specifically – i.e. when the costs are easily quantifiable but the returns aren’t.

Government grants and incentives would help in that, except we are told there is no money for anything.  Except bombs of course.  We can always find the money to bomb Libya.

Cheaper off-peak fares might work, but only if they are significantly cheaper and only if those managerial suspicions are overcome.

I wonder if more success might come from getting entire companies to stagger their hours.  Like having company A work 7-3 while the companies on either side work 8-4 and 9-5.   I know that some companies in Crawley have changed their hours so that staff can avoid congestion, but there has been no element of co-ordination, just the odd firm finishing 20 minutes before all the other to beat the rush, which will only work until a few more firms do the same. But then that is market forces for you.

I’ll be interested to see how it works out even though I am officially disinterested because of my own situation.

And then there is all the security.  I don’t think it serves much of a purpose except to make nervous fliers even more nervous.  The problem is that it is all so reactive:  everything is designed to avoid the last incident and not the next one.

There is a positive side to it though: there seems to be a lot less hand luggage now.  I remember how you used to find the compartments on the plane absolutely jammed as so many people were travelling with enormous bags as hand luggage and also taking suit carriers, carrier bags and all sorts on the plane with them.  There were supposed to be rules, but everynody ignored tham and the airports were complicit – they provided lots of trolleys airside.  I laways felt that if you needed a trolley airside then you probably didn’t understand the concept of hand luggage,

Still, we got to browse the shops a bit and had a nice large breakfast to keep us going – I had some pancakes and syrup. Proper ones – not the MacDonalds variety.  There was still a lot of sitting around and waiting though.

Coming back was another story.  Heraklion airport has got no better since we last visited, in fact it may have even got worse.  It is a terrible place.  We were quite lucky that it was an early flight home and so it was still dark when we arrived and not too hot.  Also there were not many flights at that time, but that is where the luck ended.

Even though it was more than an hour before sunrise when we arrived, it was already more than 30 degrees at the airport and the queue for our check-in desk was coming out of the doors and onto the pavement.  I still can’t work out whether it is bad design or bad organisation, but it was well over an hour before we had our bags checked in, and we were by no means the last coach to arrive.

Our plane was a 737-800 which seats only 189 passengers, nearly all are in groups of two or four, so maybe only 30 parties to go through each of the two check in desks, but still it took forever – and then you had another (much smaller) queue to put your bag into the x-ray machine before heading off to queue for the security checks.  The notoriously slack Greek security seemed a little thorough than before, but at least they didn’t make you take your shoes off.

No sooner had we got through all that and walked into the duty free shop than our flight was called.   Heraklion airport must lose a fortune through missed opportunities to sell stuff in their shops!   I do grumble a bit that our airports here, like our railway stations, are now seen as giant retail premises with travel almost an afterthought, but Heraklion is going too far in the opposite direction.

Maybe all that would be easier to take if you could at least have a smoke to calm yourself down, but even Heraklion is a smoke-free building these days – yet another way in which Habib Bourguiba airport in Tunisia is better.

Seriously, Crete would do well to sort that place out.  Not only are they missing a fortune in lost revenue from airport shops, but there is a danger of putting people off returning.  We had a fantastic week on the island, but could easily have left with our lasting memory being the chaos involved in getting off it, eclipsing memories of the friendly people, good food and stunning views.  Even just having enough room to queue inside the building would be a vast improvement.

Colleagues who commute in from Croydon will save more than £40 a month – making it more tempting to take a train instead of driving.  Pretty good when combined with the discounts on Metrobus season tickets that the company has negotiated.

For those not living near a convenient train line there are also all sorts of incentives for car-sharing and cycling.

And still the car park fills up by 9:30…

Laura Moffatt (Crawley, Labour): an oral question to Tom Harris about railways.

Plans have been published for the £5.5 billion upgrade of the Thameslink line, which is very welcome for our constituents. How will my hon. Friend make sure that it runs to time and to cost, and that its effect on the travelling public is minimised, including the upgrade to Gatwick airport?

Francis Maude (Tory, Horsham) a written question

To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster how many copies of the Morning Star (a) the Cabinet Office and (b) 10 Downing Street purchase each day.

Nice to see Frankie tearing himself away from his many directorships for long enough to spend a couple of hundred of my pounds getting a flunky to write a question about the things that really matter rather than actually turning up to Parliament and wasting the junior transport minister’s time with a question about transport, of all things – the long-overdue¹ improvements to the old Thameslink service that will offer a greatly improved service to both Crawley and Horsham.

1. so overdue that the original project was called Thameslink 2000, giving a clue as to when it was expected

We started by talking about how hybrid cars are inherently less efficient than pure electric cars – because a lot of the stored electricity is ultimately generated by burning petrol in the engine, while electricity generated by a power station involves a better use of fuel.

We touched on the idea of hydrogen cells, but soon somebody got onto the possibility of cars being run on compressed air.  This developed into how it would not matter if compressing air was inefficient in converting electricity into stored potential energy if it was powered by renewable sources like wind farms, and then it turned a little surreal.

It was declared that in theory, you could find yourself never totally stranded in a compressed-air car because you could  recharge the tank with a hand pump.  It might take a lot of muscle-power and time and pumps with gearing mechanisms so good as to be unlikely, but theoretically you could run out of fuel and pump in enough to get you to the next filling station.  Theory is a big thing to those with a scientific background.

From there it was only a small step to think that you could even pump air into your vehicle by hand while it was moving, by having the passengers pumping away like mad as you drive.  That all sounds a bit wacky races doesn’t it?

The reductio ad absurdum got even more absurdum when we imagined a situation where a lot of people sat in rows pumping away to force air into the tanks for a large compressed-air vehicle – like a steampunk version of the old triremes – which developed into double-decker buses where you could pay to travel upstairs or travel for free if you joined the lower deck where everyone was pulling at rows of levers while a fat bloke with a drum kept the rhythm for them…  so in half an hour we got a (almost) logical progression from dwindling oil supplies to a resurgence of a slave-based economy.

On the plus side, we have at least worked out how Boris is going to square the economic circle with his Routemaster 2 cunning plan.  As a fat bloke with a liking for percussion I should be OK.

The story explains that the moving of Eurostar services from Waterloo to the new St Pancras station causes a problem because while Waterloo is South of the river, St Pancras is in North London and thus further away and harder to get to for those of us in West Sussex, which all sounds perfectly reasonable – if you know bugger all about London’s rail services.

After spending 6 years working at Waterloo I can confirm that getting to Kings Cross/St Pancras from there is a pain in the arse. Waterloo is, I think, the only London terminus without a direct main line or underground connection to Kings Cross. You can take a tube to Euston then change for one stop on the Vic line, or you can take a train from Waterloo East to London Bridge to get a Northern line tube, or several other unappealing options. My colleagues would often walk part of the way or even walk all the way there just to avoid the tortuous rail journey.

After lots of lobbying, TfL have agreed to run a shuttle bus from Waterloo to St Pancras, and Cllr Tex Pemberton of West Sussex county council said:

“When a contact at Transport for London wrote to tell me about the decision he joked they were going to call the bus the ‘Tex Express’, in recognition of my lobbying activity.”

Or maybe they thought it should be called that because it will be expensive and do nothing for railway passengers from West Sussex?

For the benefit of anyone who is as unfamiliar with public transport as Mr Pemberton appears to be, trains from West Sussex go to Victoria station, which has a direct link by tube to Kings Cross/St Pancras, except for a few which go to London Bridge which also has a direct tube link to Kings Cross/St Pancras, and the erstwhile Thameslink service which goes directly to, er, Kings Cross and will soon stop at the new St Pancras International instead.

In fact, getting to St Pancras or a station which is directly linked to it is as easy as just not getting off your train from West Sussex until you get to central London. Getting to Waterloo, on the other hand, involves changing at Clapham Junction, where there are no lifts, no escalators, no trolleys, and wheelchair users are advised to allow one hour to get from one platform to another. And don’t get me started on the crowds and how you can wait on platform 10 for ages, watching packed trains pull in before you find one you can just squeeze onto – and that is without luggage.

If I wanted to get a train from Crawley to France I could travel to Victoria, get a Vic line train to St Pancras and hop on a Eurostar. or I could travel from Three Bridges station and catch a train directly to Kings Cross. OK, there is a walk from there to St Pancras but its shorter than the walk from the Waterloo platforms to the bus stops. Or I could catch a train from Crawley, Ifield, Horsham, Chichester or wherever and change at Three Bridges, East Croydon or Gatwick onto a Kings Cross-bound train. (Gatwick would be better with luggage because of the lifts)

For some reason Tex thinks I would rather change at Clapham Junction, fight to get on an SWT train to Waterloo, try to find which of the 30 bus stops around the station the shuttle leaves from and take a bus through London’s crowded streets. And there was no mention of it being a free shuttle either was there?

Another consideration is that visitors to London really do not like taking buses if they can take a train or tube instead, they just feel uncomfortable and worry that they will not know where to get off. Personally I prefer the buses to the trains, but I am in a minority and as an ex-Londoner then an ex-commuter I am not a casual visitor.

I feel in the mood for some proper fisking of the article…

He became concerned when the move was announced that there would be no provision for passengers who travel from Sussex and use Waterloo as their main port of call in London.

ie stupid people. People who would get off a train which is going where they want to go and change onto a train which is going somewhere awkward instead.

He claimed passengers faced having to make several changes on the underground, change buses, take a taxi or face a walk from King’s Cross station to St Pancras.

Only if they are such a nimrod that they went to Waterloo in the first place. The walk from Kings Cross tube to St Pancras is not far. Possibly not as far as the walk from platform 12 to platform 10 at Clapham Junction or the walk from Waterloo to the bus stops. The walk from Kings cross Thameslink station is a little further, but within weeks that will be moved to St Pancras anyway. And its not several changes on the underground anyway: its only one change unless you go a really silly way.

He said: “I contacted Transport for London about this issue because for most people from Sussex getting to Waterloo to catch Eurostar trains has been comparatively easy

Compared to what? Not compared to getting a tube from Victoria or not having to change at all on Thameslink.

“However, getting to the new Eurostar terminal at St Pancras from Waterloo is not as easy. It currently involves making several changes on the bus and underground or having to use a taxi, which is certainly not suitable for everyone.”

By which he might mean not suitable for anyone who is not on expenses. But this whole argument is based on a false premise. You might as well say that getting to St Pancras from the Isle of Wight is not as easy – its true but there is no good reason to go via the Isle of Wight. And I am still wondering how it takes ‘several’ changes on the underground.

Anyway, well done to Tex. He has managed to get an unappealing solution to a problem that did not exist in the first place. About the best that can be said for it is that it will be cheaper than Fastway and in any case will not be paid for by West Sussex. It is not totally useless though: it will be very handy for anyone in the South West or in South West London whose train services all do go to Waterloo.

Just a thought though. Is it more worrying that out of all the 70-odd Tory councillors on WSCC they decided Tex was the expert on transport, or that Transport for London didn’t have anyone familiar enough with main line rail routes to point any of the above out to Tex in the first place to save him all that lobbying? Are they so wrapped up in their tubes and buses that they don’t know what happens on the big railway?

And for once I know I am not alone. Between reading that Argus story this afternoon and bothering to write about it tonight lots of people have added comments saying much the same thing, including:

• He has not got any idea about our train system
• He is an embarrassment to the smooth running of local government.
• Am I missing something here? Sussex trains don’t go to Waterloo they go to Victoria…
• No doubt Tex has actually never been on a train
• Tex Pemberton and WSCC transport are a waste space.

And, amazingly, none of those comments is even from RWS!

One of the highlights of the year is the veteran car run at the end of the year, when all the old cars stop off in the High Street for a breather.

Today it was the same sort of thing, but for commercial vehicles. The Historic Commercial Vehicles Society had a London to Brighton run today and used the Broadfield Stadium car park as a halfway house.

I got down there at about 8:45am – not a time I would normally be up and about on a Sunday – to see the first ones arriving. By the time I left at about 10:30 the car park was heaving with old buses, vans, lorries, fire engines and all sorts of other contraptions.

There were some lovely old Morris Minor and Austin vans, a wide variety of buses from steam powered ones up to Routemasters, lots of antique lorries and nearly all of them looked a lot more shiney than my 7-year-old Mondeo. Obviously a lot of care has been taken with these vehicles. Most of them are in far better condition than when they were new as they are not now being used as workhorses.

Having said that, I think a few are still used, like how Harrods have a couple of their old delivery vans. There was a butcher’s van with “No to Tescos” stickers in the windows which made me suspect it still belongs to a butcher’s shop.

Just before 10 a whole fleet of fire engines arrived. They were of varying types and age but all came from Essex, including one from my old home town, Basildon. Quite a few vehicles had their original livery, especially the buses, which had route numbers and destinations on them and drivers and conductors in period outfits. I wonder how many of them have appeared in films or TV programmes set in the past?

I was quite surprised, given that this was a national event, how many of the vehicles were quite local to us. Sussex was very well represented, and one of the most local machines was also one of the most impressive – a steam omnibus from Horsham.

This St. John’s ambulance is an interesting one. I assume from the colour scheme and the word ‘sympathy’ that is was used to carry dead bodies, but it does not look big enough to lay a person out in whether they are dead or alive.

One of the more unusual vehicles was an old British Railways service lorry. It was a Scammel articulated lorry with a three-wheeled cab. Inside the cab there were three pedals on the floor and three levers like signal box levers. One of them came up between two of the pedals. When I flew a helicopter there were fewer controls! The amazing thing was that if you stuck your head in the window the thing still smelled of railways

While I was at the stadium I met up with someone I have been looking forward to meeting for a long time after corresponding online for a while. George is a retired chap with various enthusiasms including cycling and photography which he combines to generate an enormous number of pictures of Crawley and beyond. We have been comparing pictures for ages, and jointly administer the Crawley group on Flickr , but never actually met until today.

A lovely man, and I’m not just saying that because he was one of the few people who voted for me and TP in Furnace Green!

I only got a little bit carried away with the camera… if anyone is really interested in old buses (and I know a couple of my ex-bosses at London Underground who that applies to) the complete set of photos is on Flickr.

Living in a town where the economy is pretty much dependent on the aviation industry, its interesting to read about how the business model for these economy airlines works, but isn’t it amazing what we will tolerate in the cause of cheap flights? Obviously there is the impact on the environment and climate change and everything, and the increasingly well-documented effect on holiday destinations, and exploitation of the foreign locals, but I did not realise how much the exploitation begins at home.

The Ryanair crews have to:

…pay for their own training, uniforms and meals and staff at the company’s office have to use their own pens and are not even allowed to use the company’s electricity to charge their mobile phones.

It comes as no surprise to hear that trade unions are not recognised by Ryanair.

And how about Michael O’Leary, the man in charge of Ryanair? he has:

…acquired a taxi licence and equipped a Mercedes with a meter so that his chauffeur could get around Dublin quicker by using bus lanes.

So thats what I learned today – the spirit of the 80′s is still alive and kicking.

Last Thursday some cameras turned up and spent an amount of time filming. Not sure how long as I made sure I was out to lunch at the time, but they were shown around, had everything explained to them and they filmed people at work.

I'm sure the management knew what it was about, but us plebs only found out on Monday that the film was to be used on the news.

It turned out to be a segment about how London Underground have reacted to the 7/7 bombs and are speeding up the introduction of the new radio system to improve communications.  My company's involvement is not too great in this yet as our main responsibility is to manage the network once it is installed. Someone else is doing the installation, and that has been delayed by 30 months, as the LU chap pointed out. In the meantime we just have to try and keep the old stuff running.

After all that, the segment on the news was between 5 and 10 minutes long, and film from our building occupied just a few seconds of that.

It was a bit of an eye-opener though. I had never really thought much about the stories on the local news, and had not known they were planned so far in advance. This bit was filmed 4 days before transmission, and arrangements for access to our secure site were made before that. You sort of expect the news to be more instant than that, even with the pieces which are more features than current events.

Seeing the other bits of film from station locations and tunnels, I realised that there must have been several hours of footage shot, on top of the planning and organising. Then there would have been editing.  And all for a few minutes of footage to be shown twice in a day and then never again. It seems like an expensive way to do it all.

Biggest laugh was that the station footage was to show the nasty, old, creaky existing radio system which really should have been replaced a long time ago. Although it acheived its purpose, the stuff they showed was actually some of the newest radio equipment on the network – the really antiquated gear is obviously not photogenic enough. 

But when you see a 3-metre unicycle chained to a lamp post you have to stop and look. I can’t see it catching on as a form of commuter transport though.

There are some advantages, like superb visibility (see right over the tops of 4x4s, bendy buses, etc.), minimal obstruction when chained up, small turning circle, no need for mud guards, both hands free for hand signals/juggling but where are you going to put the briefcase and spare shoes?